It was, perhaps, doomed from the beginning. When word first broke that the Rockets would be the winners of the Dwight Howard free-agency sweepstakes, the assumption was that they would quickly follow up with a move to bring in a power forward, preferably one who could create space with shooting, and that they would use center Omer Asik as bait.

The pursuit of free-agent forward Josh Smith never materialized and a sensible rumor involving New Orleans forward Ryan Anderson went nowhere. With Asik saying he had no interest in a bench role, Houston came into the season with a radical plan to play both Howard and Asik together in a sort of Twin Towers redux.

Eight games into the season, coach Kevin McHale is preparing to scrap the whole thing. On the surface, McHale can justify the change based on matchups—the Sixers and Knicks, Houston’s two opponents on their quick Eastern swing, both are using small lineups.

“The way teams are playing us, it depends on what they’re doing,” McHale told reporters. “A lot of times, if we have a lot of success going inside, a lot of driving, kicking, drop-offs, we get dunks, we are running the pick-and-roll really well, (and) eventually, they just pack the paint, they just say, ‘We are tired of seeing you get layups and dunks,’ and they pack the paint.”

The numbers after eight games have not been pretty. The Rockets’ offense grinds to a halt with Asik and Howard, and McHale has limited their floor time together to 11.6 minutes per game. The two combined to shoot 41.4 percent from the field when playing together, an almost impossibly bad result for two guys who have combined to shoot 57.3 percent in their careers.

According to 82games.com, the two most common Howard-Asik lineups, with Chandler Parsons and James Harden on the wings and either Patrick Beverley or Jeremy Lin at point, have yielded a plus-minus of minus-33 points. When Howard is on the floor without Asik, the Rockets are plus-36.

Howard has not complained about being asked to play power forward, and given what has happened with him since he left Orlando and joined the Lakers, that’s probably wise. But he is clearly out of place.

“I am going to do whatever the coach asks me to do,” he said. “Everybody has to set out to do whatever the coach asks for us, that is what you have to do even if you might disagree with what the coach asks. … I have to do whatever it takes. I have been playing 5 for nine years, so to squeeze back to the 4, play 4-5 sometimes, it is a little different. But I want to win, so I have to do whatever it takes.”

A problem for the Rockets has been Howard’s offensive struggles, even without Asik. Howard has been terrible on post-up plays, and considering those account for 44.9 percent of the possessions he gets with Houston (according to Synergy Sports), that’s a problem—Howard scores an average of 0.563 points per possession in the post, behind only Jermaine O’Neal and Josh Smith among players with at least 25 post-up possessions. (LeBron James, by way of comparison, leads the league with 1.286 points per post-up possession.)

That could be a matter of Howard having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings. Or it could be a bigger problem. Howard’s post-up production has been steadily in decline since 2010-’11, when he averaged 0.928 points per possession for Orlando. That slipped to 0.879 the next year, and dropped to 0.746 with the Lakers last season. This year’s number is an especially hard crash, but it does fit a pattern of post-up drop-off for Howard.

That could change, though, especially as Howard gets back to starting games at the center spot and remaining there while he is on the floor. McHale will look to stretch the floor, too, with more minutes for Terence Jones, Francisco Garcia or Omri Casspi. Howard has always worked best when surrounded by perimeter shooters—like Anderson and Rashard Lewis in Orlando—and that’s certainly not an apt description of Asik.

All things considered, the Rockets have done well to get off to their 5-3 start despite the Asik-Howard experiment. They still need to figure out how to get Howard’s post performance back up to snuff, and what to do with Asik, who is no more amenable to a bench role now than he was in the offseason. But the big lineup was a problem, and McHale will be better off for his admission that it’s not working.